Tag: cooking

TITLE SEARCH

A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client who lost his house in Hurricane Katrina and wanted to rebuild… He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to the parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the Lawyer three months to track down. After sending the information to the FHA, he received the following reply:

(Actual letter):

“Upon review of your letter adjoining your client’s loan application, we note that the request is supported by an Abstract of Title. While we compliment the able manner in which you have prepared and presented the application, we must point out that you have only cleared title to the proposed collateral property back to 1803. Before final approval can be accorded, it will be necessary to clear the title back to its origin.”

Annoyed, the lawyer responded as follows:

(Actual Letter):

“Your letter regarding title in Case No. 189156 has been received. I note that you wish to have title extended further than the 194 years covered by the present application. I was unaware that any educated person in this country, particularly those working in the property area, would not know that Louisiana was purchased, by the U.S., from France in 1803, the year of origin identified in our application. For the edification of uninformed FHA bureaucrats, the title to the land prior to U.S. ownership was obtained from France, which had acquired it by Right of Conquest from Spain. The land came into the possession of Spain by Right of Discovery made in the year 1492 by a sea captain named Christopher Columbus, who had been granted the privilege of seeking a new route to India by the Spanish monarch, Isabella.

The good queen, Isabella, being a pious woman and almost as careful about titles as the FHA, took the precaution of securing the blessing of the Pope before she sold her jewels to finance Columbus ‘ expedition. Now the Pope, as I sure you may know, is the emissary of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and God, it is commonly accepted, created this world. Therefore, I believe it is safe to presume that God also made that part of the world called Louisiana. God, therefore, would be the owner of origin and His origins date back to before the beginning of time, the world as we know it AND the FHA.

I hope you find God’s original claim to be satisfactory. Now, may we have our damn loan?”

He got the loan.

☞ This is bogus, but fun.

TOEVS ON KUO

From Jim Toevs, a friend in Montana:

My next door neighbors here in Hot Springs, Montana, are wonderful folks. They are the quintessential good neighbors, in the best “Old West” sense of the word. We have never shared a meal together, but we have exchanged baked goodies on occasion, and we have an unspoken mutual understanding that we can always count on each other in any kind of an emergency.

They belong to an independent conservative Christian church here in town, but they have never tried to proselyte me, and I know from something the woman said, that they voted for Al Gore in 2000, and this year, they had a big sign for a Democrat State Legislative candidate on their property.

They know that I am gay, but we have never talked politics. However, being a former Christian, myself, I was interested to consider how the Mark Foley and Ted Haggard scandals would affect the Evangelical turnout and their votes in the 2006 General Election.

About a month before the election, I started seeing op-ed pieces by a man I had never heard of, named David Kuo, who had just written a book entitled, Tempting Faith. David Kuo was the number two person in the Faith-Based Initiative Office in the Bush White House, who resigned when he saw the way in which the Bush political apparatus was using Evangelicals for purely political purposes.

After reading a couple of his articles in the press, I decided to buy the book to try to understand the impact it might have on the religious right.

As I read the book, my neighbors kept coming to mind, and yesterday morning, I decided to take a risk, and took the book over to my neighbors. I said that I had found the book interesting, and that I thought they would as well. I only said something very general about it being about the seductive nature of power and politics.

Unbeknownst to me, fifteen minutes after I left their home, their pastor showed up. He saw the book sitting on the kitchen table and exclaimed, “That is a VERY important book! I have a copy, and between the two of us, every member of our congregation is going to read it!”

My neighbor could not wait to call me on the telephone and thank me for the book.

I believe Tempting Faith will break the Conservative Republican hold on many Evangelical Christians.

You may not choose to read the book, but at least Google David Kuo and read some of his recent op-ed pieces.

If Progressives are going to claim the political center, which I believe we must do if we are to build a viable national political movement, it is important to understand that we can no longer assume that Conservative Christians are captives of the Right Wing Republicans.

☞ Kuo’s latest New York Times op-ed.

INCONVENIENT DVD

MM: ‘It’s at Netflix, here. And for what it’s worth, all 48 copies were rented all last weekend at the local Blockbuster near Hartford CT.’

FIGS

Andy Maltz: ‘Cut the figs in half, grill them until almost black, top with a dab of marscarpone and square of proscuitto. I don’t like figs, but this is incredible!’

☞ I tried this, but couldn’t find the ‘grill’ setting on my microwave and have no idea what marscarpone is, so I just popped the fig into my mouth. Not bad that way either.

MOYERS

Ralph: ‘You should really have given a warning about the Moyers speech at West Point. I frequently read your blog with my first cup of coffee at work and then settle down to my daily tasks. By the time I got to Emily Perez I was nearly weeping with anger and shame and profound sadness. I am now useless at work for at least the next hour.’

☞ From now on: warnings.

MONKEY BUSINESS

I assume you spent most of the day yesterday designing chimp messages for all your friends. I did.

This one came from a chimp in a major investment house’s syndication department. This, from a trader who was supposed to execute a 25,000-share short sale for his client. Wanna buy some bonds?

SYMS

Suggested here a couple of years ago at $7.90 a share, SYM closed last night at $17.75 on news of a ‘Dutch auction,’ under which the company proposes to buy back up to about 22% of its shares at a price of $16 to $18. I’m not selling my shares, despite the nice 125% long-term gain, because I figure the company has a better idea of its value than I do. It seems to think that, at $18, the stock is worth buying a few million shares. (That doesn’t mean the stock might not fall back after this excitement is over, or that the company’s judgment might not prove wrong. But for those who can afford the risk, it may be worth hanging on.)

QI

It’s now a word in Scrabble. Or in the dictionary, anyway. And my computer doesn’t know! This changes everything.

PROBLEM SOLVED

You were probably wondering what to do with the previously frozen $4-a-pound baby octopuses in the fish counter of your local supermarket. Sitting there right next to the $31-a-pound stone crabs. I couldn’t ask Charles, who only eats things with legs, not arms, so I asked Steve, who manages the fish department at Publix. How do you cook these? His face twisted into a seriously unenthusiastic look (who would want to, it seemed to be saying). ‘Boil them,’ he finally said, as he handed them to me.

Well, I don’t mean to brag, but here it is:

1. Boil them until you are absolutely sure they are dead.

2. Drop them into a bowl of Ragu Lite Tomato Basil spaghetti sauce.

3. Enjoy!

If you want to get fancy, haul out some salt and pepper. If you want to go crazy, boil some spaghetti to underlie your octopi.

I can’t tell you how pleased I am with myself for discovering this.

THE PLUTOCRACY

The Republican priorities are nothing less than astonishing. Now that Exxon’s chair has gotten his $398 million retirement package (plus perks), the Republican leadership seeks to eliminate the estate tax his heirs will suffer when he dies. Click here. (Actually, the article is about much wealthier people, to whom $398 million is just fooling around money.)

CALL YOUR MOTHER

Peg: ‘A few months ago, my father e-mailed that video you posted to my sister and me. She watched it and told me that she was sobbing by the end. I assumed she was, once again, being my nit-wit little sister . . . until I watched it and had exactly the same reaction.’

THEN BAKE HER SOME BANANA BREAD

Tim Bonham: ‘Mike wrote: ‘You would be proud of me. I went to the store and saw the produce guy putting all new blemish-free bananas on display and pulling the bananas that had some brown spots off display and putting them into 3 very large boxes.’ My mother has been doing something like that for years. Started late one Wednesday night after choir practice, when she stopped at the grocery store and found the produce manager throwing bunches of slightly brown bananas into the garbage. She told him that was foolish, they were still good; in fact, brown ones were the best for banana bread. So he said take all you want, just bring in some of the banana bread. So she made some, and dropped off a plate of fresh banana bread at the store a couple days later. The next Wednesday night, he told her the bread was great, and he had a couple of cases of brown bananas in back for her. That exchange has now gone on for 15 years. Through several sales and name changes of the store, two location moves, and many produce managers. The old manager always tells the new guy about this, they always introduce themselves and tell how much they like fresh banana bread. Coming home from college, and having Mom tell you that you can help mash some bananas for banana bread is fine, until you go into the kitchen and see that there are cases of bananas! (And I don’t even like banana bread that much.) But you could tell your readers that if they take these excess bananas and bake them into banana bread, they can then freeze that. And it freezes much better than the fresh bananas do.’

☞ This is way beyond Cooking Like a Guy™, but if you need a recipe, click here.  Or, as Kathi Derevan suggests, how about using them to make Smoothies?  (My recipe:  put two bananas in the blender, some OJ, some ice – hold your thumb on “liquefy” – and if no one else is around, drink straight from the blender jar.  Having a party?  Add Myer’s rum and a little Coco Loco.  Oh, what the heck.  Add it anyway.)

BUT HURRY

According to Popular Science (thanks, Brian), “The banana as we know it is on a crash course toward extinction.”

BAD ADVICE

Last week, I gave a couple of examples of really bad advice we get as children . . . “I before c except after c” . . . you can’t refrigerate bananas . . . and I invited more such from the audience.  Jonathan Pond went way off the reservation and tried to turn this into a money site (of all things) – People: we are here for the recipes! – and then cheated by appending to his recollection of bad advice an example of good advice.

Can’t anyone follow instructions?

Jonathan writes:

“Worst advice from your parents:  ‘The first thing you should do when you start your first job is to put a year’s worth of income in a savings account in case of a financial emergency.’  An obedient child then spent the next 14 years adding savings to the emergency account, all the while earning 2%.  Best advice from your parents (probably given when you were an adolescent):  ‘For one moment’s pleasure, you could end up paying for the rest of your life.’  While at the time you may have thought they were talking about something else, they were actually talking about credit cards.”

SHROOMS

Mark W. Budwig: “Take your mushrooms out of plastic wrap and put them in a paper bag; they keep three times as long without ever getting slimy.  In fact, if they’re fresh and firm to begin with, they’ll keep for a week and a half or longer, just drying out slightly.”

☞ Now that’s news you can use.

Moving on . . .

GOOD QUESTION

David Sirota asks: “How is it possible that Democrats and the media have not reminded the public that President George W. Bush three times was given the chance by U.S.military commanders to eliminate Abu Musab al Zarqawi, but three times he refused? This is not conspiracy theory – this is fact, as reported by NBC News.  Why aren’t the Democrats constantly asking this question when the GOP attacks them over national security?”

In part:

Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.  The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.

“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.

In January 2003, the threat turned real. Police in London arrested six terror suspects and discovered a ricin lab connected to the camp in Iraq.  The Pentagon drew up still another attack plan, and for the third time, the National Security Council killed it.  Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.

CORRECTION

Dan Albro: “Although I agree with the cause espoused by the ‘Velvet Revolution’ link you posted, I was unhappy that you posted a link where merely clicking on it would cause an e-mail of support to be sent out to who knows where.  If you post such a link, please indicate on your site what will happen if you click on it and let the reader decide whether to click or not.  Otherwise you’re tricking readers into expressing support for something they may or may not support.”

☞ I screwed this up somehow.  When I visited the site, it gave me the option to send an e-mail urging Congress to support Rush Holt’s election protection legislation.  I did, and I guess it gave me a thank-you screen that must be what – blearily – I linked you to.  So, never fear, you sent no inadvertent e-mails.  You just got the thank-you screen.  THIS is the one I hope you will click.  SORRY!

But first . . .

HOW OLD WILL YOU BE IN 2035?

Mark McMahon: ‘I am currently investing monthly in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Fund as a way to supplement a pension. Are you familiar with this fund and if so would you recommend it for someone who wants a decent return and a hands-off approach?’

☞ Vanguard is always a good choice because of its low expenses and high integrity. And monthly investing, in the long run – whatever economic calamities may occur along the way – is a great way to attain financial security.

LA BUBBLE

In small part:

When the price of houses in California soared 17% in 2003 and 22% in 2004, a curious thing happened: Instead of home ownership decreasing because fewer people could afford houses, it rose to record levels . . .

Confronted with soaring home prices, Californians are adopting a “buy now, pay later” strategy on a massive scale. The boom in interest-only loans – nearly half the state’s home buyers used them last year, up from virtually none in 2001- is the engine behind California’s surging home prices.

But all that borrowed money might be living on borrowed time. When higher bills start coming due, Herron and hundreds of thousands of other homeowners in the state will have to find ways to cope – or will have to sell.

In the most dire scenario, if they owe more on the home than it’s worth, they’ll simply walk away. Abundant foreclosures could spark a downturn in the entire housing market, leading to the long-feared bursting of what some call a housing bubble.

. . . “If you can fog a mirror, you can get a home loan,” said mortgage analyst Ralph DeFranco.

SCALLOPS

John Lemon: ‘Just wanted to say that, as miserable as I have frankly been over the past seven months (what with the election and getting cancer and all – not sure which was worse) I recently experienced a moment of unadulterated ecstasy thanks to your wonderful scallop recipe. I guess while our civil rights are being eroded, the environment is being pillaged and the nation itself becomes increasingly isolated and vulnerable, I can take solace in being able to afford a pound of bi-valve delicacies once a week. It is indeed a grand time to be rich and powerful in America.’

And now . . .

CURVEBALL

Here is why each member of your family has already spent more than $1,000 attacking and occupying Iraq . . . each American’s share of an enterprise whose goals, with better planning and management, could have been achieved at a small fraction of the cost in cash and human tragedy. It turns out that in deciding to launch this effort before we were ready, we relied on one drunk we whom we knew to be highly suspect. And lost the goodwill of much of the world in the process.

Ah, but those scallops!

But first . . .

ACTIVIST JUDGES

A decision by a California judge yesterday, certain to be appealed, held that these gay couples – including one that has been together more than 51 years – are entitled to the same legal rights as any other married couples. Judges in New York City, Washington State – and of course Massachusetts – have found the same thing.

It’s amazing anyone cares so much whether gays get drivers’ licenses, marriage licenses, liquor licenses, or any of the other civil stuff law-abiding citizens get . . . but on the specific issue of ‘activist judges,’ something funny has happened, at least in Massachusetts.

The state legislators who voted in favor of gay marriage were all reelected, while some of those who voted it down have been voted out. It’s expected that when this issue next arises in the Massachusetts legislature, the elected representatives themselves will affirm the Court’s decision. So at least in some small pockets of civilization (Canada is another that comes to mind) it’s not just crazy judges who are interpreting ‘equal protection under the law’ to include gays – it’s legislators.

This is great news for the Republicans, who will try to use gay marriage to cut Social Security benefits, thwart funding for education and health care, impose a global ban on embryonic stem cell research, eliminate the estate tax, criminalize abortion, drill in ANWAR, attain a filibuster-proof lock on all three branches of government – the whole list. The longer gay marriage can be kept in the news, the better.

But what are judges to do? Conclude that a couple of 51 years should be entitled to equal protection under the law – but then rule otherwise?

It is a dilemma. Yet attitudes are changing. Soon, a majority of Americans may decide it’s just not that important to them to deny Rosie O’Donnell’s partner and their kids Social Security survivor benefits . . . or to insist that Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, a committed couple of 51 years, remain ‘strangers in the eyes of the law.’

What is so fragile about Senator Rick Santorum’s marriage that it is threatened by the happiness and commitment of Phyllis and Del?

Interracial marriage, so long illegal, may not be your cup of tea – but how does it threaten or weaken your own?

Justice Clarence Thomas is married to Virginia, a white woman. But if he had been married to Virginia in Virginia prior to 1967, he could have been arrested.

Let’s hope he remembers that when, eventually, all this comes before him for a decision.

And now . . .

WOOF! WOOF!

Kevin Smith: ‘Another excellent organization is Canine Companions for Independence, which trains assistance dogs for sighted, but otherwise handicapped people. The program is similar to the Guide Dogs program, with early training being provided by volunteers and then intensive training afterwards before being matched with a person. If for some reason the dog does not pass the intensive training, the original trainer has the first right to keep the dog for a small fee. We’ve had several of these dogs in my office (an auditing department), and it’s been a great experience all the way around.’

Michael Roth: ‘Another part of Guide Dogs is that they cull out of the program really well-behaved dogs with good genetics and use them as breeding stock. They are looking for people to house these animals (‘Breeder-Keepers’). The role involves keeping the dog in your home, following the rules of the school, and taking care of them properly. This offers another wonderful opportunity for people to contribute to Guide Dogs and the Guide Dog mission. I am currently a Breeder-Keeper for Genie, a wonderful Golden Retriever, who has had three litters of pups who have gone on to be Guide Dogs.’

LIONS

Tony Spina: ‘Did you know that there are about 60 organizations in the US that train dogs to be eyes for the Blind? Paws with a Cause is one, and my personal favorite is Leader Dogs for the Blind in Rochester Michigan. And I would like to add two additional facts:

• All of the year-long training of the dogs that you wrote about and the weeks-long lodging/feeding/training of the dog’s blind future partner is completely free. Also dogs are given to people living all over the world, not just in a particular state.

• Lions International is a charity that focuses mainly on blindness. So by joining your local Lions Club, you support research to cure and prevent blindness throughout the world, and help your communities while you are doing it. The biggest share of the donations from the Lions Club that I am a member of (Addison Township, Michigan) is sent to Leader Dogs. With more than 46,000 clubs in 193 countries and geographical areas there is a Club to join near you!

Click here for the speech by Helen Keller in 1925, eight years after the Lions founding, that changed its purpose to helping the blind.’

Mike Wallin: ‘While I love the heartwarming stories about guide dogs and the heart burning stories about Brussels sprouts, can you occasionally mention something about money?’

☞ Tomorrow!

BUGS

Peter Vanderwicken: ‘How come I no longer get your column by email? By the way, Brussels sprouts are best cooked by boiling for 10 minutes, then drenching in red wine vinegar.’

☞ Fixed.

Toby Gottfried: ‘You mark some paragraphs with a little hand and outstretched index finger – in Internet Explorer anyway. In Mozilla Firefox, this wingding shows up as the letter F.’

☞ That’s F for Firefox.

TO EACH HER OWN

April Stevens: ‘At the sight of Brussels sprouts my husband will dramatically clutch his heart and cry, ‘No, not green balls of death!’ I have learned to measure and cook them for one.’

BANKRUPTCY

Jim Petersen: ‘When Harry Truman’s business went bust, he did not declare bankruptcy – instead, he worked hard and lived poorly for many years to pay back his debtors. I respect him for it. This is an uncommon value today. I do wish Congress would find a way to support people whose medical expenses exceed their capacity and pay our troops more, but don’t agree that encouraging them to declare bankruptcy is the answer.’

☞ I think anyone with the talent, charisma, and good health to become President of the United States should be ashamed to go bankrupt. And I agree: providing adequate health care to the uninsured would be a great way to reduce personal bankruptcies.

Ed Biebel: ‘Hearing about the change in the bankruptcy laws and all of the disparagements of the people who file bankruptcy drives me up a wall. Back in July 2003, I wrote you about my brother and his travails with his epilepsy and his hospital bills. You’ll see in that piece that, though hard-working, my brother had incurred a large debt through the despicable behavior of his employer. This company owner led employees to believe that they were insured and was taking premiums from their pay but not sending them to the insurance company. My brother was blocked from filing for bankruptcy by the tenacious lawyers from the hospital. My point in writing you is that many people ask why my brother didn’t pursue a claim against his employer. The answer is that the owner of the company and the company itself filed bankruptcy and were protected. Why do I have a feeling this new bankruptcy law will not one whit to protect people from unscrupulous companies that go into bankruptcy? It is a great time to be rich in America.’

Munch: ‘You link to Paul Krugman on the Administration’s bankruptcy bill – ‘tightening the screws on the least fortunate among us, as we gradually turn the clock back to the 1890s,’ as you put it. With the ascendancy of the religious right and corporatism, I would expect to start seeing quotes like this reappearing.’

CARAMELIZED

Marie Coffin: ‘Slice in half and broil until the outside is nearly black. Eat. Yum. Broiling seems to caramelize the sprouts and make them even sweeter and tastier.’

MINIMUM WAGE

Doug Jones: ‘I agree with your position on minimum wage in general. However, Washington and Oregon have relatively high minimum wages, $7.35 per hour give or take. Some McDonald’s restaurants now have call in centers for their drive thru windows, eliminating one or two employees. The call-in centers are located in North Dakota! There’s very little stopping McDonald’s from locating these overseas. So, even some of these jobs can be outsourced to a lower cost provider.’

☞ Talk about Yankee ingenuity. You drive up to the window and ask for Chicken McNuggets or Kibbles & Bits and someone in Pakistan enters this order. Even so, the bulk of the work of fast food chains or motel maid staffs is likely to remain in situ. My hope is that the relatively few jobs lost in a minimum wage hike – I agree there surely would be some – would be more than made up for in the increased economic demand those higher wages created.

WITH KETCHUP

John Kasley: ‘Place rinsed sprouts in microwave dish. Add a generous slug of ketchup (yes, ketchup). Roll them around in it. Cook for a while. Eat from dish.’

☞ Now you’re Cooking.

Monday: More of Your Minimum Wage Comments, and a Real Dog

color code: sprouts are green; bankrupts, deep in the red; minimum-wage earners, dirt poor

Tomorrow: Your thoughts on the minimum wage. Today: Don’t miss the links beneath these sprouts.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS

Mark Kirby: ‘I hope your praise of this unjustly maligned vegetable will encourage others to come forth.’

☞ And forth they came . . .

Bart: ‘A moment’s more work, creating a taste that has received enthusiastic endorsement from every Brussel Sprouts eater ever invited to our table. Boil sprouts in a generous amount of plain chicken broth. Do not overboil to point of mush. Drain all the broth from sprouts. Roll wet sprouts in and coat well with bread crumbs seasoned with a generous amount of ground black pepper and oregano. Lightly brown the sprouts in butter in a hot skillet. Serve immediately. When possible, purchase the sprouts still on the stalk. We generally prepare this as a last minute dish. Removing the stalk of sprouts from the refrigerator sparks conversation and allows one to extol the dish.’

☞ They come on stalks? I thought they were like little vegetable plums. In any event, Bart’s concept of ‘a moment’s more work’ does not quite jibe with mine. To me, a moment’s more work is putting them on a plate instead of eating them straight from the colander.

David: ‘Boil a bit, sauté a bit with butter and walnuts or pecans. Mmmm, good.’

☞ Sauté? What is this, sauté? We are Cooking Like a Guy™, may I remind you, not like a Guy de Maupassant.

Michael Ammerman: “Just as there is an S on ‘Cliffs’ in ‘Cliffs Notes,’ there is an S on ‘brussels’ in ‘brussels sprouts,’ the name derived from the Belgian city.”

☞ Well, I checked before I put that up – Google has 118,000 references to Brussel Sprouts. But in response to this e-mail, I checked and see 328,000 hits for Brussels Sprouts . . . so henceforth I will go with the crowd.

TWO LINKS WORTH CLICKING

Here is James Grant with his dour view of the investing landscape (if Warren Buffett has $43 billion parked on the sidelines, maybe the sidelines are not an entirely dumb place to be).

And here is Paul Krugman on the Administration’s bankruptcy bill (tightening the screws on the least fortunate among us, as we gradually turn the clock back to the 1890s).

BRUSSEL SPROUTS

Buy. Boil. Salt. Eat. One of life’s simplest underappreciated pleasures.*

RELIVE YOUR YOUTH

This site – thanks, Roger – reminds you how old you were when big things happened. Don’t miss the links that show how old you likely were when you first heard certain songs or saw certain movies. You can even print personalized, if somewhat gruesome, birthday cards (‘You were 7 years old when the Challenger blew up – Happy Birthday!’).

And now . . .

WHAT SHALL WE PAY THE NIGHT WATCHMAN?

Brooks: ‘I understand and basically agree with the principled reason for not raising the minimum wage: namely, that higher wages will reduce total employment because some employers will not be able to keep as many employees on payroll at the higher rate.’

☞ We no longer sew a lot of clothes – those jobs are already gone. Typical minimum wage jobs these days can’t easily go overseas. Hotel maids and fast-food employees are not going to lose their jobs to the Chinese if their pay is raised (for the first time in 9 years) from $5.15 to $7 an hour.

If all the competitors in an industry must raise wages, no one competitor is disadvantaged. The price of a burger might go up a nickel; the cost of a hotel room, a dollar . . . but people will not abandon fast food for home cooking over a nickel or sleep in their car over a dollar.

If it’s not overdone, raising the minimum wage should have far more positive effects than negative. It enhances the value of work and personal dignity. It creates more spending power among people who might actually spend it. And that boosts the economy, creating more jobs and profit. Certainly raising the minimum wage nine years ago did not raise unemployment, which fell to the lowest levels in our history.

Hiking the minimum wage gives people at the bottom a fairer shake, but also helps employers who want to give that fairer shake, yet can’t now because doing so unilaterally would put them at a competitive disadvantage.

The U.S. should espouse a global treaty requiring each signatory to establish a minimum wage – however low – and requiring ‘best efforts’ to raise that wage each year until it reaches the median minimum wage for all the signatories. All voluntary, but a matter of national pride and, when quantified this way, something to shoot for.

*For a few words on underappreciated vegetables generally, click here.

The market is high, given the huge problems we face. Bill Gross’s December letter is well worth the read. The dollar will continue to sink – especially against the eventually-to-be-revalued Chinese Yuan. The price of imported goods will rise. And sooner or later inflation and interest rates will rise here, too.

Of course, one of the (few?) justifications for the Dow over 10,000 here is that, relative to the Euro, say, it’s actually fallen to bargain levels, and will get cheaper still. When the Euro was at 90 American cents, buying $10,000 worth of the Dow at 10,000 (say) cost 11,111 Euros. With the Euro at $1.32, the same Dow at 10,000 now costs a mere 7,575 Euros. So it seems to us unchanged, but to the Europeans, it’s 32% cheaper.

And if the Chinese can buy IBM’s PC business, who’s to say, as they revalue their currency upward, they may not buy other U.S. assets and shares, driving up their prices and pumping funds into the bank accounts of the sellers, to be reinvested in other shares?

Moreover, while it is easy to envision all kinds of terrible scenarios – and there is a real chance one or more may materialize – we should never rule out brighter possibilities. With Arafat gone, the world really might be able to make peace in the Middle East, beginning a virtuous cycle as the seeds of bitterness and terror gave way to the power of hope and dreams. The election in Iraq could take place as scheduled and things could actually begin to get better (even though the CIA seems to think they will get worse). As King Abdullah II of Jordan told Chris Matthews yesterday, no one knows if this will happen. But if Iraq could join the modern world, it would be the beginning of a much brighter future.

So there is much to hope for – who among us did not hope we’d be greeted with flowers when we invaded Iraq? – and, I think, even more to be worried about.

SELL APPLE

Suggested here last November 25 at around $4 when the stock was just above 20, Apple’s long-term calls (known as LEAPS) are now around $43, with the stock at 63. Stupidly, foolishly, and reprehensibly, I suggested selling half at the end of March, for little more than a double (what was I thinking?). And later, when the LEAPS had tripled, I suggested perhaps selling a like number of out-of-the-money calls to make for what would have been a likely quadruple while you waited for the LEAPS to go long-term. So if you followed these suggestions, you would have long since doubled half your money and quadrupled the other half, but be sitting here like me, rocking back and forth wringing your hands, imagining how sweet life would be if you had just held on.

But while I can make an (uninformed, seat-of-the-pants) case for AAPL at 200 a few years from now, I have to think that if you had the good fortune not to see or act on my earlier profit-taking suggestions, now you surely should. Sell.

Yes, the company has no debt and close to $6 billion in cash and marketable securities (so you’re in effect paying ‘only’ $19 billion for the company, not its full $25 billion market cap). And yes it has a great young CEO and a phenomenal brand with fanatically loyal customers. But it earned only $276 million in fiscal 2004, which isn’t such a hot return even on $6 billion in cash and securities, let alone a $25 billion market cap. And if you had adjusted those earnings to account for stock option grants, as corporate America is likely to have to start doing this coming year, the $276 million, I’m told, would have been just $168 million. (And 2003 and 2002 would both have shown losses.)

Indeed, you might want to take a small bit of your realized profit from the LEAPS and buy (say) a July, 2005, 75 put, which last traded at $14.80 ($1,480), so that if the stock were $55 next July, you’d have turned your $1,480 into $2,000 . . . and if it were $45, you’d have turned it into $3,000, doubling your money, before taxes, in little more than 6 months.

But I’m not doing this (and at least for now missed my chance to do something like it when the stock hit $69), because Apple might just stay where it is or go up. One of my friends, who shorted Apple at a painfully lower price, scoffs at its 2% share of the computer market. But what if those millions of iPod owners not only continued to buy iPod add-ons and next-generation iPods, and all that . . . but began buying Macintoshes and, over the next few years, Apple’s market share rose from 2% (or whatever sliver it actually is) to 10%? Or even 5%?

Profits could well rise out of proportion to sales (tripling sales might only double costs), and maybe Apple’s profits jump 10-fold. You could have a $200 stock.

I am absolutely, positively, definitely not predicting this. But to me, Apple’s price here, while unattractive, is not necessarily bubblesville.

See how hard this is? I own an iPod, I’ve been to business school, I’ve spent at least half an hour thinking about all this, and still I don’t know what to do. I’m very happy having taken my lovely profit and now being off on the sidelines, neither long nor short, watching.

(My friend who is short thought Apple, instead of Lenovo, the Chinese firm, should buy the IBM PC business. What a nice little irony that would have been.)

COOKING LIKE A GUY™

The work proceeds apace. Like a soufflé (which you’ll find nowhere in my book), it cannot be rushed. Principal photography has begun. (I am having creative differences with the photographer. I need scruffy. I need ketchup stains.)

In any event, I present you:

Recipe 19 – Sinless Strawberry Sin
Step #1: Buy fresh strawberries and a can of fat-free Reddi-Wip.
Step #2: Having uncapped and shaken the Reddi-Wip – and marveled that the entire can, at 5 calories a serving, has just 200 calories – grab a strawberry by its green-leafy handle and swivel your wrist so that the berry itself faces mouthward.
Step #3: Shuzzle a snowdrift of Reddi-Wip on top . . . eat . . . repeat.
Step #4: Once all the strawberries are gone (this being America and you being a guy), invert the Reddi-Wip and place its nozzle in your mouth like a straw. Shuzzle one final crescendo. If there is a heaven, it must be very much like this.

YOUR WEEK-END ASSIGNMENT

And it will take you only 5 minutes: Bill Gross’s aforelinked December letter.

CONDI

The good news is that naming an extraordinarily talented black woman Secretary of State sends a terrific message, both to people here at home (especially young African-Americans) and to people around the world (especially in nations that oppress women or that would prefer to think of America as racist). Condoleezza Rice is a quadrilingual, figure-skating, concert piano-playing star.

The bad news is that, unlike her two predecessors (who were, combined, a black woman), she is the wrong person for the job. Where Bill Clinton arguably needed a Secretary of State who could help him go to war in Serbia (namely, Madeleine ‘What’s the point of having this superb military . . . if we can’t use it?’ Albright) . . . and George Bush certainly needed a Secretary of State to slow his rush to war in Iraq (namely, Colin ‘you break it, you own it’ Powell) . . . what Bush gets in Rice is not a counterbalance but rather, in effect, a co-conspirator. Or so one fears. So State may be purged of dissenting voices, as the CIA will be; the House and the Senate are already under tight rightwing control; the Judiciary tilts ever more rightward, as does the press. What ever happened to checks and balances?

YES BUSH CAN

You may recall that I erroneously billed this group (yesbushcan.com) as Kerry converts, when in fact they were pro-Kerry all along, just having a little fun. ‘Other stunts they’ve pulled,’ I just now learn from one of your pre-election e-mails I’m catching up on, ‘include stealing Barbie and GI Joe dolls off store shelves and swapping the voice boxes, so Barbie wants to go to war and GI Joe wants to go shopping and do his nails.’ I’m beginning to get the picture.

IS IT ME, OR IS IT HOT IN HERE?

Dan Kinsella: ‘It would appear that the global warming increase in the last 100 years that you referred to a few days ago is actually due to bad math. Click here. That doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t happening, just that the study that everyone refers to as ‘proof’ is wrong. More refereed studies would have to be run to see if the temperature has actually changed much in the last 100 years.’

☞ The temperature may not have changed much in the last 100 years. What I couldn’t tell from clicking that link is whether the two premises I’ve been operating on are wrong. The first is a spectacular rise in CO2 levels in the past century or so – after 400,000 years of moderate, regular cycles. (This data derived from glacial ice samples. The deeper you drill, the older the ice and the air trapped within. Or so I’m told.) The second, is the way, over those 400,000 years, temperature seemed consistently to follow the CO2 cycle. Did the bad math undermine either of those premises? If so, I need to post a correction here.

But I’d also ask: Do we really need to be 100% sure before we do something? What if there were only a 20% chance of catastrophe . . . would that not be worth beginning to take action to avert? And doesn’t common sense suggest that the modern-day activities of 6 billion people likely would have an effect on the environment? I’m not saying that if we all stamped our feet at the exact same moment the planet would shatter, although if we all gathered in one corner, like a pimple on a baseball, I feel sure we’d wobble its rotation. But why wouldn’t burning 70 million barrels of oil a day into the atmosphere (and however many tons of coal) eventually have some impact?

STUFF I OWE YOU

It’s just so hard to catch up! But . . . the Ten Commandments of E-mails (thanks to your refinements) . . . the Calico Cat Denouement . . . some more of your thoughts about the election . . . an (insincere) apology for talking so much about the election . . . responses to your responses to my responses about the election . . . my acorn squash recipe* . . . and coming soon, I hope: ‘Bin Thinking About the Dollar.’

*Oh, okay, here it is: BUY one acorn squash, STAB it once with a knife so it doesn’t explode, MICROWAVE for 8 minutes unless it’s very small (6 minutes) or your microwave is pretty lame (10 minutes). Voila! CUT in half, SALT and BUTTER (I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Lite), DIG IN – and yes, it’s fine to eat the seeds and all the rest, though I eschew the skin.

My God the things you learn from this column you never got from Rukeyser.